[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 9 (Thursday, January 13, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H184-H187]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      THOSE WHO CANNOT REMEMBER HISTORY ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. CLYBURN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks 
and include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from South Carolina?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. CLYBURN. Madam Speaker, I first got interested in and started 
studying history as an 8-year-old. I grew up in a parsonage where my 
brothers and I were required, every morning before breakfast, to recite 
a Bible verse and, every evening before retiring to bed, we had to 
share with our parents a current event.
  We didn't have television. Therefore, in order to carry out that 
rule, we had to read the newspapers. It was delivered to our home every 
afternoon. Today, those who are living down in my hometown of Sumter, 
you get the Sumter Daily Item in the morning. Back then it was an 
afternoon paper.
  It was my interest in the Presidential campaign of Harry Truman that 
attracted me to politics. Harry Truman ascended to the Presidency from 
the Vice Presidency. Of course, no one gave him a chance to get elected 
on his own. He did not have, according to conventional wisdom, what it 
took, and he was going to be up against this scion, this big-time 
prosecutor from New York, Thomas Dewey.
  In fact, one Chicago newspaper was so assured of the outcome, they 
didn't bother to wait on the results to write the headlines for their 
newspapers the day after the election. All of us remember that 
headline: ``Dewey Wins.'' When the votes were counted, all the votes 
were counted, Truman had been elected President.
  That always intrigued me, this man of limited educational background, 
a disability, without any of all of the trappings of what would make 
one a big-time leader. Of course, when Truman left office, he was not 
very popular with a lot of people. In fact, his popularity was pretty 
low.
  But as we look back on history, and people continue to write about 
history, they keep upgrading Truman. Most places I see now, he is in 
the top ten. In my opinion, he is in the top five. I consider myself, 
to this day, a Truman Democrat.
  After studying history, I went on to teach it. I became a firm 
believer in George Santayana's admonition that those who cannot 
remember history--of course, he said ``the past''--are condemned to 
repeat it. That is what brings me to this floor today.
  It has been a long, long time since I have stayed here on what we 
call getaway day to address this body during what we call Special 
Orders.
  I listened intently today as we debated the legislation that was a 
vehicle by which we would send two pieces of legislation: The Freedom 
to Vote Act, a bill that was proposed by Senator Joe Manchin, and the 
John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, a bill that this body 
approved and sent over to the Senate as H.R. 4. Upon John Lewis' death, 
I came to this floor and asked and received unanimous consent to change 
the name of H.R. 4, to rename it in honor of John Lewis, and this body 
granted unanimous consent for that to happen.
  Now, John Lewis and I first met as 19-year-old college students. I 
was in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He was down in Nashville, Tennessee. 
We met on the campus of Morehouse College, where the Vice President was 
on the day before yesterday, I think it was. It was also the weekend 
when I first met Martin Luther King, Jr.
  Now, as is often the case--and we saw quite a bit of it today--a 
disagreement cropped up between us so-called Young Turks, those of us 
who were in SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--in 
fact, this was the second organizational meeting of SNCC--and SCLC, 
which was being run by Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and 
others.
  We asked Dr. King to come and meet with us so we could try to 
reconcile our differences. Dr. King came and agreed to a 1-hour 
meeting. That meeting convened at 10 p.m. in the evening. It was not 
over until 4 a.m. the next morning. I always refer to that evening and 
that meeting as my Saul-to-Paul transformation. I came out of that 
meeting a changed man--well, I guess, boy. I have never been the same.
  I started reading everything I could about Dr. King. I went back to 
my campus, and I got his book, his first book, ``Stride Toward 
Freedom,'' and, of course, all the way down through his last book, 
``Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community.''
  I interacted with him several times over the years. After the 1965 
Voting Rights Act, one of Dr. King's first trips was to the little town 
of Kingstree, South Carolina, a rural town in Williamsburg County that 
is currently in my district. When he came that day, he came to talk to 
us about all the marches we were having. I was living in Charleston at 
the time. My late wife and I got in our little Falcon and drove to 
Kingstree to be a part of that meeting.
  Dr. King talked that day about marching. We had marched to integrate 
lunch counters. We had marched to get off the back of the bus. We had 
marched for a lot of social things. But he said to us on that day: It 
is time to march to the ballot boxes. He put a new definition on what 
marching was all about. I remember that day as if it were yesterday.
  In fact, not long ago, the local community decided to have a 50th 
anniversary celebration of that event and called me and asked would I 
attend. I told them I would be glad to attend.

                              {time}  1300

  Of course, I later got a phone call from a reporter who asked me what 
I was going to say at this 50th anniversary. I told the reporter, I 
said: Well, I think I will reminisce a little bit about that day and 
the speech he gave.
  And he says: Well, did you see it on television? How do you know 
about the speech?
  I said: I was there.

[[Page H185]]

  The reporter didn't quite believe that I was there, and of course, he 
questioned me, wanting to know what I remembered most about that day.
  I said to him: The thing I remember most about that day was that 
there was a very big storm. In fact, the storm was so bad that, on our 
way there, we had to stop and wait it out. When I got there, I was sure 
that we were not going to have a celebration, but the sun came out, and 
Dr. King came. But there was so much rain in that cow pasture, I told 
him, that we were in, it was not very conducive for the convention.
  The reporter was kind of quiet, and he hung up. A few days later, the 
reporter called me back. The reporter had gone to the Weather Bureau to 
check out my story about that day and sheepishly reported to me that he 
had checked it out and that my description of that day was pretty 
accurate.
  I said: Well, I lived through it. The things you live through are the 
kinds of things you remember most, and you remember them best.
  I have lived through a lot, growing up in South Carolina. I remember 
the conversations I had with my parents. My mother was a beautician. As 
you can imagine, a lot of conversations go on in the beauty shop.
  So when my mother would sit down with me, we would often have 
discussions about information that flowed throughout the beauty shop. 
In fact, I wrote about one day, coming home from school. One of the 
rules we had was that we had to stop by the beauty shop to report in 
after school every day to make sure that things had gone okay.
  On this particular day, when I went into the beauty shop to make my 
report, there was a lady there that had grown up with my mother in the 
cotton field adjacent to the one that she grew up in over in Lee 
County, South Carolina.
  When I walked in, I spoke, and this lady turned to me and says: My, 
my, how much you have grown since I last saw you. My goodness, she 
said, your voice is beginning to change.
  Then she asked me a question, what it is that you want to be when you 
grow up. That question was asked of us very often back then. I began to 
tell her how proud I was of that background that I had developed since 
1948 studying Harry Truman and how I had developed this interest in 
politics and government. I told her I wanted to grow up to be a Member 
of the United States Congress.
  That lady looked at me and very sternly said: Son, don't you let 
anybody else hear you say that again.
  That lady was not throwing cold water on my dreams. She just felt 
that a little Black boy in Sumter, South Carolina, should not have 
those kinds of dreams and aspirations. It was not safe for a little 
Black boy to have those kinds of dreams.
  My mother never said anything that day, but that night, when she 
closed the beauty shop, she came into the house and called me to the 
kitchen table, and she sat me down.
  She said: Now, James, don't you let what that lady said to you today 
ruin your dreams. You stay in school, you study hard, you stay out of 
trouble, and you will be able to live out your dreams and your 
aspirations.
  My mom did not live to see me get elected to Congress. She died in 
1971. I didn't get here until 1992. But I think about her almost every 
time I come into this Chamber, how right she was.
  So, today, looking back on that history, I recall from my studies 
that the first civil rights bill passed by this Congress was passed in 
1866, giving the former slaves the right of citizenship. Of course, 
following that 1866 law, South Carolina held a constitutional 
convention in 1868. That was a very interesting constitutional 
convention.
  I would like to share with you some of what took place in that 
convention. There are two things kind of interesting about the 
convention to me.
  Number one is the majority of the attendees at that convention were 
Black. It is kind of interesting.
  The second one is there was an attendee at that convention, Robert 
Smalls, who was there in 1868. Robert Smalls had been a slave until 
1862. Just think about that. He was a delegate to the South Carolina 
Constitutional Convention and would go on to serve 10 years in the 
South Carolina legislature and another 10 years here in the United 
States Congress--a former slave.
  Now, I don't know how Robert Smalls felt about slavery. He didn't 
like it. If he did, he would not have engineered the escape. He would 
not have stolen the Planter and taken his whole family and friends and 
delivered the Planter to the Union Army and got his freedom and $1,500 
for having done so. And he turned that $1,500 into great wealth and had 
become a great soldier in the Union Army.
  Now, back then, Robert Smalls, a former slave, had not gone to 
school. He didn't have a high school education, and therefore, though 
he wanted to be, they would not have taken him into the Navy. He was 
actually inducted into the Army and assigned to a Navy ship. That is 
why you see some ships now named for Robert Smalls.
  It was my great honor to be in Baltimore, Maryland, at the Baltimore 
harbor to speak for the christening of the USS Robert Smalls.
  Now, however Robert Smalls may have felt, after Robert Smalls gained 
wealth, he went back to Beaufort, South Carolina, where he was born and 
raised and where he had been a slave. He bought the house that he had 
been a slave in. The McKee family that owned him legally, when they got 
back, Mr. McKee, John McKee--I think John was his first name--had 
passed away, and his wife was living in poor health and no wealth.
  Robert Smalls went and got her and brought her to that house that she 
had been the head of and he had been a slave in, and he nursed her, 
kept her there until her death. He forgave, but Robert Smalls never 
forgot.
  He died in 1915, basically of a broken heart. Why? Because Robert 
Smalls, who had been in that 1868 convention as a delegate, was also a 
delegate in the 1895 South Carolina Constitutional Convention.
  Now, in 1868, January 14, 1868, is when he got his State rights as a 
full-fledged American citizen, and then in 1895, Robert Smalls was in 
that convention. It was in that convention, September 10, 1895, that 
Robert Smalls got all of his rights taken away.
  As I said earlier today on this floor, any rights given by the State, 
in this instance the United States, can be taken away by the States, in 
this instance the United States. That is why I am fearful of what is 
taking place, most especially in the other body.
  What we did here today, sending those two bills to protect the voting 
rights of people of color, is being threatened by the other body with a 
filibuster. I have been saying for some time now that I believe very 
strongly that constitutional rights ought not be subjected to the 
filibustering whims of any one person.
  We don't allow that for our budget matters. We call it reconciliation 
when it comes to doing the budget so that you can pass it. If 
everything in this bill applies to the budget, we can have a simple 
majority to pass it. When the full faith and credit of the United 
States was put at risk a couple of weeks ago, we worked around the 
filibuster in order to raise the debt limit so as not to ruin the full 
faith and credit of the United States of America. And you are telling 
me that the same should not apply to basic constitutional rights?
  As I said here on the floor today, as a result of that 1895 
convention that took all of those rights away, in 1897, George 
Washington Murray left the United States House of Representatives, 
being the last Black person. At one point, of the four Black 
Representatives in this House, three were from South Carolina.

                              {time}  1315

  The very first Black person ever elected to the United States 
Congress--I want to clean that up because a lot of times I say that and 
people start sending me pictures of Hiram Revels, and what's his name 
down there in Louisiana. Look, they were Senators, and they were sent 
to this Congress by their legislative bodies.
  It was not until, what, 1913 when we changed the Constitution in 1913 
to allow for the popular election of Senators. So the first person of 
color, the first Black person to be elected to the United States 
Congress was Joseph Rainey. We just named a room on the first floor of 
this Capitol in his honor. It just so happens it was on the 150th 
anniversary of his election, which I

[[Page H186]]

think was December 12, I believe, in a special election, December 12, 
1870. And it just so happened that on that day, none of us knew it, but 
when we got to the room that we named in his honor and we looked, guess 
what number was on the room? Room 150. It is now named for Joseph 
Rainey from Georgetown, South Carolina. He was the first one in 1870.
  In 1897 George Washington Murray left this Congress. And because of 
the Constitutional Convention, what they did in 1895, taking all the 
rights of Black people away, not another Black person got elected to 
this Congress from South Carolina until yours truly was elected in 
1992: 95 years.
  And for most of that time, well, I hadn't really counted all the days 
and the years, but let me say this: For a major portion of that time, 
if not most of it, Black people were in the majority in the State of 
South Carolina. They were in the majority but had zero representation 
here in this Congress, zero representation in the legislature, and zero 
representation in governing bodies all over the State.
  I remember the first Black in South Carolina that got elected to the 
county council down in Beaufort, South Carolina. All of these things 
happened in my lifetime.
  And so what I am saying to this body today and what I am saying to 
this great country of ours is that what we are doing here today in 
allowing States to pass laws that take away voting rights and 
privileges, just think about this, a State, one of my neighboring 
States, Georgia, just passed a law that says not only are we going to 
suppress, throw up all these barriers to voting, we aren't just going 
to do that, but now if this line gets long and you are standing out 
here in the hot weather trying to cast a vote and someone decides to 
give you a bottle of water to quench your thirst, they just committed a 
criminal act. You can give a bottle of water to anybody walking out on 
the streets if they are thirsty, but if you give a bottle of water 
while someone is standing to vote in line, you have just committed a 
criminal act. I want the people of this country to think about that. I 
want my friends in the other body to think about that.
  And then it went even further. They have put into the law a mechanism 
and a little entity, about I think three people, and sent them up to be 
referees over whether or not the voting was to their liking, the 
results. And if they do not like the results of the vote, they can 
nullify the vote. That is what they just did.
  You got 19 States--and I want to hasten to add here all of them are 
not southern States--19 States, two of them up in the Northeast have 
passed 34 laws and have introduced over 400 to make it difficult for 
people to vote and to nullify the efforts of voters. That is Third 
World stuff. That is banana republic stuff. That is not the stuff of 
which America is made. And we are going to sit idly by and just watch 
this happen?
  Earlier today, one of my colleagues on the other side was upset 
because someone has compared--I think maybe upset with the President. 
In fact, one of my colleagues said as a southerner he was insulted by 
President Biden's speech. And the basis I understand of the insult is 
the fact that he called what these States are doing with these new laws 
Jim Crow 2.0. I am not into all of this IT stuff, so I don't know what 
that really means, but I know this: It sounds like I agree with him. I 
am not insulted by that. Because Jim Crow was not Jim Crow until it 
became Jim Crow.
  Reconstruction--one of the reasons I sort of correct some of my 
friends sometimes when they say it is because I don't want them to get 
things muddled. I hear people talk all the time about me being the 
first Black Congressman from South Carolina since Reconstruction. That 
is not true. All nine of us, the eight before me and me, we are all 
since Reconstruction.
  Reconstruction didn't last but about 12 to 13 years based upon which 
date you want to use, it didn't last. Reconstruction was over in 1876, 
so Robert Smalls did not get elected until the 1880s. Robert Smalls got 
elected since Reconstruction. No.
  Reconstruction ended in 1876, and at the end of Reconstruction is 
when all these so-called Jim Crow laws went into place. The Black Codes 
went into place. Those things, those laws starting with the Supreme 
Court decision in 1872, the Crescent decision coming out of Louisiana, 
which is kind of interesting.
  But Plessy v. Ferguson came out of Louisiana. And I want to thank the 
Governor of Louisiana for having--after all these years--issued a 
pardon to Homer Plessy, who is a man who was arrested and fined $25 for 
riding in a forbidden car on the train that he had paid a first-class 
ticket for and he was arrested putting in place separate but equal, 
which was never equal.
  And so I want to read to you something that was said in the 1895 
convention by Robert Smalls. It is real interesting. These are the 
words of a former slave: ``Since Reconstruction times'' and I am 
quoting Robert Smalls, ``53,000 Negroes have been killed in the 
South.'' Since Reconstruction. Remember now, Reconstruction ended in 
1876. So somewhere between 1876 and 1895 when Robert Smalls made this 
speech he says: `` . . . 53,000 Negroes have been killed in the South, 
and not more than three White men have been convicted and''--he said 
``hung'' here, though I want everybody to know that I am educated 
enough to know that should have been hanged--``for these crimes. I want 
you to be mindful of the fact that the good people of the north are 
watching this convention upon this subject. I hope you will make a 
Constitution that will stand the test. I hope that we may be able to 
say when our work is done that we have made as good a Constitution as 
the one we are doing away with.''

  Just think about that. They were doing away with the Constitution of 
1868 that gave Robert Smalls and other Blacks the right to vote, gave 
citizens those rights, and in 1895 he is saying, I'm hoping that when 
we finish here today we will have made a new Constitution that is as 
good as the one that we are getting rid of. I think Robert Smalls knew 
very well what was in the making.
  There is another gentleman in that Constitutional Convention with him 
who also served in the Congress, Thomas E. Miller, he had served in the 
Congress. And in order to get him to serve him in Congress, they made 
it attractive for him to be the first president of South Carolina State 
University where Joe Biden was a couple weeks ago and from which I 
graduated. Thomas Miller spoke on this issue, as well.
  But here is what I want you to understand. One of the things they 
were putting in this Constitution was in order to get the right to vote 
you had to be able to interpret sections of the Constitution of the 
United States. You can't get the right to vote until you interpret the 
Constitution. And now some of the sections are a little worse than 
that.
  In Alabama--we have all seen the stories--in order to get the right 
to vote you had to be able to tell whoever was standing there--somebody 
who probably couldn't even count, let alone understand the 
Constitution--how many jelly beans were in a jar. These were laws 
passed by States. And anybody who may think that that is silly to have 
to be able to count or guess how many jelly beans are in a jar in order 
to get the right to vote, that is no more silly than arresting somebody 
for giving a bottle of water to somebody standing in line in the hot 
sun.
  That is how stupid some of these laws they are passing are. And we in 
this body and my friends across the other side of this building are 
condoning that, saying that we can't change this process to get rid of 
that kind of silliness. But this is serious stuff.

                              {time}  1330

  ``How can you expect an ordinary man to understand and explain any 
section of the Constitution, to correspond to the interpretation put 
upon it by the manager of an election.''
  And I guarantee you, some of these people--I knew some of them--who 
were running these elections could not read the Constitution, much less 
interpret it.
  I want everybody to listen to this:
  When by a recent decision of the Supreme Court, composed of the most 
learned men in the State, two of them put one construction upon a 
section of the Constitution and the other justice put an entirely 
different construction upon it.

[[Page H187]]

  How did we get 5-4 decisions in the United States Supreme Court? 
Because five people think one way; four people think the other. Which 
one of them would get the right to vote, interpreting the Constitution? 
This is the kind of silliness here.
  To embody such a provision in the election law would be, to me, that 
every White man would interpret it all right and every Negro would 
interpret it wrong.
  And then Robert Smalls said, I appeal to the gentleman from Edgefield 
to realize that he is not making the law for one set of men.
  Robert Smalls said, ``Some morning, you may wake up to find that the 
bone and sinew of your country is gone . . . I tell you that the Negro 
is the bone and sinew of your country and you cannot do without him. I 
do not believe you want to get rid of the Negro, else why did you 
impose a high tax on immigration agents who might come here to get him 
to leave?'' That is very insightful, very insightful.
  Now, Thomas Miller, who had also served in Congress, and as I just 
said, became the first President of South Carolina State, Thomas Miller 
was a free-born attorney. He was a college graduate. And as I said, he, 
too, had served in the Congress. As I told you earlier, in 1868, the 
majority of the delegates were Black. In the 1895 convention, six 
Blacks, only six. Thomas Miller was one of the six.
  Tillman, Miller told the convention, condemned Reconstruction-era 
political corruption but had ``not found voice eloquent enough, nor pen 
exact enough to mention those imperishable gifts bestowed upon South 
Carolina . . . by Negro legislators.'' That is what he said.
  He said that ``We were 8 years in power. We had built schoolhouses, 
established charitable institutions, built and maintained the 
penitentiary system, provided for the education of the deaf and''--that 
is a colloquial term that is no longer used--to the deaf and mute--you 
can imagine what the other word is--and ``rebuilt the jails and 
courthouses . . . In short,'' he says, ``we had reconstructed the 
State.''
  Now, the reason I point this out to you is because he was a majority 
Black legislator in South Carolina that passed a law that provided for 
free public education for everybody. Little old State of South Carolina 
was the first State in the Union to provide for free public education 
for everybody. Until that time throughout the South, only the elite 
were provided education.
  And as I said here, the school, the penitentiary system, the most 
modern penal system had been created in South Carolina by a majority of 
Black legislators; the school to educate the deaf and mute done by a 
majority of the Black legislators. And that is what Thomas Miller was 
talking about.
  Now, I want to say something about what Robert Smalls had to say 
about waking up and finding that the law you passed that was meant for 
me may one day apply to you. We just saw that last year in January when 
Georgia elected Senator Ossoff. Senator Ossoff ended up defeating an 
incumbent Senator. Now, that incumbent Senator was David Perdue.
  Now, let me tell you something interesting about that, and I think 
that people better start thinking. Georgia decided several years ago--I 
remember when it happened--that because there were so many Black people 
voting, they decided to set up--and you can go back, I won't go through 
it today, and read the debate that took place in the legislature.
  When Georgia decided in order to win a general election in Georgia, 
you had to have 50 percent plus 1. And man who proposed it argued on 
the floor that he was doing that in order to dilute, to nullify the 
effect of the Black vote, to make sure that you get to a 1-on-1 Black 
versus White runoff requirement. He felt that if there were three or 
four people in the general election and then the Black people voted in 
unison, they could get a Black person elected to the Senate. And that 
is not what he wanted to happen.
  So he wanted to make sure that if there were more than two people 
running and nobody gets 50 percent, then you have to have a runoff in 
the general election between those two. And if one was Black and the 
other was White, the White person was sure to win.
  Well, that tells you how shortsighted he was, because that is exactly 
what happened in that other election between Warnock and the incumbent 
Senator. Now, Warnock got a smaller vote than the person he was in the 
runoff with, but he didn't get 50 percent so they had to have a runoff. 
David Perdue got 49.8 percent of the vote, but it was not 50 percent.
  If they had not changed that law, David Perdue would have been 
reelected to the United States Senate on that day back in November. He 
never would have been in the runoff because he had 49.8 percent, but 
they put in the law that you got to get 50 percent. So now he has got 
to runoff. And he runs off against Ossoff and gets beat. He would have 
been elected if Georgia had not changed.
  Just like Robert Smalls told the people of South Carolina: You are 
not making this law just for me. You are going to wake up one day and 
this law is going to apply to you. Just ask David Perdue.
  Madam Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 8 minutes remaining.
  Mr. CLYBURN. On the other side, the gentleman was shortsighted in his 
debate in the legislature simply because Warnock was in this runoff. It 
was Black against White. But the people of Georgia decided they would 
elect a Black guy. So the Georgia legislature was wrong on both fronts 
when they put that law in place. The law that would have reelected 
Perdue was taken away and they put in place a law that was supposed to 
ensure his election, and he lost. And they lost on both fronts.

  So I say to my friends in the Senate, and I have been talking to 
them, and I am, quite frankly, very disappointed in my conversations 
and that is why I decided to come to this floor today. I want to say to 
them, they should be careful. They should be very, very careful because 
what may look like a good thing to do today, may not be such a good 
thing after it is operated for some time.
  Madam Speaker, I will give you back a few of these minutes. I could 
go on for some more. I have got some other things I probably should 
have said and I may have already said some things that I should not 
have said. But I did say I would say something interesting about that 
first Constitutional Convention in 1895.
  I just told you about free public schools, when in that 
Constitutional Convention, the guy that put up the resolution calling 
for free public schools was Robert Smalls. The penal system that they 
put in place, that was the envy of the world, done by the majority of 
Black legislators. I have talked about all that.
  But there was something else that they proposed that they couldn't 
get done. They had proposed in 1868 at that convention, the majority of 
Black people tried to give the vote to women--in 1868. Something that 
did not happen until the 19th amendment in the 1900s--whenever that 
was--1920-something. Just to let you know that skin color has nothing 
to do with the extent of progressive ideas or, what we might call, 
enlightened thought.
  Madam Speaker, I want to close with--I call it a poem. I used to 
quote it pretty often. A German theologian, Lutheran theologian named 
Martin--and I think I am pronouncing his last name right--Niemoller. It 
isn't quite spelled that way, but I am not that equipped in the German 
language but I think that is the way it is pronounced. And I close with 
his words:

       First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out 
     because I was not a socialist.
       Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak 
     out because I was not a trade unionist.
       Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out 
     because I was not a Jew.
       Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak 
     for me.

  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________